The embarkation of slaves at Ouidah
(Whydah), the notorious port in the Bight of Benin, was in fact an embarkation point at
the beach near the lagoon town of Ouidah. This seems hardly the ideal place for what was
the major port in West Africa for the slave trade, with probably one million people
leaving from this beach, which is encapsulated in three images (No. 72-75). The people
forced to leave Africa from this point, crossing the dangerous surf, were identified in
the Americas as "Mina" and included Gbe-speaking groups, including Fon, Ewe,
Allada, and Ewe, but also Yoruba and people from the interior countries of Borgu and the
central Sudan. The beach is haunted, the antithesis of touristic hedonism, befitting only
a memorial to commemorate the "slave route."
